Samsung's S-Pen stylus tech on its way to Galaxy tablets?

More Samsung-flavoured snippets from the rumour mill this morning: the Korean firm is reported to be thinking about introducing its S-Pen stylus tech into its range of Galaxy tablets.

The S-Pen debuted with the Galaxy Note smartphone towards the end of last year – which with its 5.3in screen many would argue pretty much is a tablet anyway – but Samsung is said to be pleased with its reception and thinking of a wider roll-out.

Up until comparatively recently the word “stylus” was a dirty world in the mobile industry – a throwback to the dark old days when we didn't have capacitive touchscreens in all their multi-fingered glory.

But the Galaxy Note is foremost among a small group of devices that have returned to the stylus and given it a high-tech makeover, allowing it to sit alongside touchscreens and physical buttons as a third form of communicating with our mobile playthings.

Unlike resistive styli of old, the S-Pen effectively mimics a tiny finger touch, and is therefore more accurate and doesn't interfere with the effectiveness of the touchscreen to interpret real finger touches – in other words, it doesn't make existing touch tech any less effective.

And things appear to be going well enough for Sammy to step things up. Speaking to US publication Laptop, Samsung product marketing manager Ryan Bidan revealed: “I think a pen interface continues to make a lot of sense across a number of screen sizes, like the larger is more obvious of those.

“That’s about as specific as I can be without announcing a product.”

That's by no means a confirmation, but the last sentence does seem to suggest that there is in fact a product in the works featuring S-Pen technology. We expect we'll know soon enough.

Having used a Samsung Galaxy Note for 3 weeks, I can say it needs more work, but taking it to the next level, tabs, makes sense.
As it is, though, it's not much better than it was 3 years ago on a good winmo phone. And there is a learning curve. Add to that the frequent moments of lag when transcribing your scribbles into neat print, and ...

I've been using the Note for around the same length of time as Jan and, while I love the device (speed, size, colours, dpi, performance, memory etc etc etc) I still haven't really "used" the pen. Any time I have tried it, it was for the sake of using it rather than it being an optimal method of input, especially since typing on the large screen querty is much faster than writing

Definitely can imagine more useful applications for it on a bigger screen though I could draw all kinds of funky stick men with it!